A slight clarification

Blake is on vacation, I’m still here. If you feel like rage quitting due to a fatal monocle allergy or lack of trust in CCP, contract yer shit to haav0c. No matter where it is, I’ll take good care of it.

Future Unknown

It’s time for a break. My three characters have been asking for some leave for some time now. Between all the trading, hauling, and manufacturing their mettle has been worn down.

This, along with some real life factors, are causing my ship’s drives to power down. Triathlon race season is upon me and my major race, a Half Ironman, is coming up in 4 weeks; it is time for the last major push before race day. Additionally the recent CCP revelations and departure from their original mission statement (seriously CCP, re-read your mission statement), are pushing me into a timeout.

CCP’s mission is to attract and retain customers by providing top quality online entertainment. CCP does this by establishing and nurturing a trust relationship with customers both in terms of quality of content as well as quality of service.

CCP encourages respect, dialog, interaction and cooperation on a deeper level between its employees and customers than is common in online games. By this and through this CCP provides a unique way for improving the quality of its products and creates an inspiring and challenging environment for talent to thrive.

http://www.ccpgames.com/en/company/about-us.aspx

Caldari Cruiser V is in the queue, my new Charon and Providence BPOs are in research, and all my assets are safely in a highsec station.

I will be posting some ideas about new business ventures, perhaps even looking for some partners, so keep an eye out for that.

glassdoor.com’s CCP Company Review

After college I wanted to live in a big city; I packed up, moved to Chicago, and started waiting tables in restaurants to help pay my rent. The University that I attended required that we graduate with some work experience and while out at a bar, a bartender friend introduced me to a manager at an IT Consulting company. I went on to have an interview, and then I started an entry-level help desk job.

I finished the program at the University while working full-time and eventually starting doing Level 1 support, then onsite support, and the helping out a team of IT technicians.

The company that I worked for was very much a start-up: brutal hours, strange and exhausting client requests, and a lot of similarities to the descriptions that I found for glassdoor.com’s review of CCP.

Pros

“onsite kitchen”
“laid back company”
“quite focused on the fun aspect of work”
“extremely smart and talented people”
“flexible environment”
“it is a wonderful place to be. But it is not a place to work for long”
“allows its employees to take independent initiative on many projects”
“camaraderie and sense of family is truly amazing”

Cons

“at times required, to do night and weekend hours in addition to normal working hours, without any compensation or time off guaranteed”
“often management is unwilling to participate in a thorough communications”
“Communication and knowledge sharing is a disaster”
“no documentation for older areas of development”
“struggles severely with internal and external communications”
“sticking a few php for dummies books in the games room really just is not corporate training”

The repeated comments about documentation and communication stand out as huge red flag for me. We had around 20 clients, 100-150 active issues at any given time, and projects rolling out constantly.

The majority of our communication was reactive and not proactive. When an email server was going to be rebuilt, sometimes clients would not know the extend of the downtime, service migration steps, or even final cost. The lack of clear communication before hand ended up hindering our client’s trust in the end.

Post Incarna, with a community that is flaring up with criticism and doubt, I hope that we see some solid, direct, and transparent information out of the company.

[edit] June 24 00:30 CCP Pann in An overdue apology and request for parley

It’s my birthday today

My family sent me a 24 pack of coke bottles, a half eaten snack bag of pretzels, a walgreen’s brand Dr Pepper with “happy birthday” written on it and a chocolate croissant.

CCP got me the alt feature in scanning and delayed the JB one-per-system change for a month.

Have a great day, everyone!